Spotify’s decision to introduce comment sections under podcasts should surprise no one. For years now, apps have been ripping off each other’s most popular features. Where once apps adhered to their respective “things,” today they want to do it all: You can post Stories on YouTube, use AI search tools …
Read More »The New ‘Ethical’ AI Music Generator Can’t Write a Halfway Decent Song
When the new “ethically trained” artificial-intelligence-powered music generator Jen dropped a couple of weeks ago, it was at a fairly auspicious time: The Recording Industry Association of America had just sued Udio and Suno for copyright infringement, alleging that the programs were trained on copyrighted material without the creators’ permission. …
Read More »Android Now Lets You Edit Text Messages
Hey u up? I miss u babbe. That’s the kind of immediately regrettable text you’ll now be able to salvage on Android Messages. This week, Google announced a bunch of new features coming to its Android mobile platform, and perhaps most useful among them is the ability to edit messages …
Read More »Spotify Hates Albums. Here’s How to Fix That
I might be old-fashioned, but I like listening to albums. Spotify seems to always be fighting me on this. I like experiencing a collection of songs all at once, played in the order chosen by the artist. I especially like doing this when I discover a new artist: I want …
Read More »Spotify Will Brick Every ‘Car Thing’ It Ever Sold
Owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing device are begging the company to open source the gadgets to save some the landfill. Spotify hasn't responded to pleas to salvage the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary outlets to enable drivers to listen to and navigate …
Read More »Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?
In 2016, a pair of 19-year-old pals from Winnipeg appeared on the reality television show Dragons’ Den—Canada’s version of Shark Tank—to seek funding for their music streaming startup, Musi. Baby-faced and clad in ill-fitting blazers, Aaron Wojnowski and Christian Lunny looked more like students practicing a presentation than entrepreneurs raising …
Read More »An Iconic CD Changer Is Back to Challenge Streaming Fatigue
Today, Bang & Olufsen—the audio company that has made what we called “the prettiest gadgets in the world”—is rereleasing its iconic CD player, the Beosound 9000. If you were alive in the 1990s, you definitely saw this CD player standing in a place of honor, six discs and glass lid …
Read More »Nas’ 'Illmatic' Was the Beginning of the End of the Album
Music consumption and discussion in 2024 bears little resemblance to fandom from one decade ago, let alone three or four. Old songs gain new life on TikTok; AI creates original music trained on data from the world’s most popular artists; drill rappers post a song on YouTube on Tuesday, and …
Read More »Did Social Media Kill the Pop Song?
Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” landed with the force of an atomic bomb. Released last month, the thumping diss track hit the Billboard Hot 100 in a flash but went dynamite across X, Instagram, and TikTok thanks to a surprise verse from Kendrick Lamar, the Compton rapper who won …
Read More »One Man’s Army of Streaming Bots Reveals a Whole Industry’s Problem
A man in Denmark was sentenced to 18 months in prison today for using fake accounts to trick music streaming services into paying him 2 million Danish kroner ($290,000) in royalties. The unusual case reveals a weak spot in the business model behind the world’s biggest music platforms. The 53-year-old …
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